Lorna Dallas performed Stages at Live at Zédel, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The art of cabaret is the most difficult of the performing arts to get right. The idea should be for the artist to create their own world into which they invite the audience to participate. The vital thing to have is complete rapport with the people sitting out there in the front.
Normally in the theatre or the opera house, or even the concert hall, the performer ignores the audience as if the fourth wall were truly in the way. In cabaret there is no fourth wall and you ignore the audience at your peril.
A prime example of a great cabaret performer is Lorna Dallas who brought her new show, Stages, to Live at Zédel for one night only. Dallas is with her audience all the way from beginning to end, talking to them as well as singing for them, taking them back to her roots in Carrier Mills, Southern Illinois (pop. 2,000) and then keeping them with her as she charts her progress through the various stages of her life and work – hence the title, Stages.
She begins the evening with a medley of Irving Berlin’s theatre anthem ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ and Stephen Sondheim’s ‘A Glamorous Life’. What follows may not always show the theatre world in a good light but Dallas looks for the funny if not the sunny side of her life to illustrate its various stages.
She began singing from an early age in a family where her sister was a member of a local women’s chorus. Lorna longed to be part of it and eventually she was. Marc Blitzstein’s ‘I Wish It So’ from Juno and ‘All I Need is One Good Break’ from Kander and Ebb’s Flora the Red Menace illustrate her need for a life upon the wicked stage. And with ‘Blues in the Night’ she really gets to the heart and soul of the matter in hand with a beautiful arrangement by her musical director Christopher Denny.
In her early days Dallas was noted for her fine coloratura soprano voice which she still uses to great effect as well as going deep down low in a vocal range that is simply amazing.
She has the knack of making her repertoire appear newly minted such as in Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s ‘It Never Was You’ from Knickerbocker Holiday. I have never heard such an inspirational version of this lovely song before and Dallas performs it with the requisite emotion but without any sentimentality.
It’s part of a medley combining Cole Porter’s rarely heard ‘Never Give Anything Away’ (from Can–Can), advice she received personally from a New Orleans madam, with some additional lyrics by her director Barry Kleinbort. These two songs are coupled with ‘Poor Little Hollywood Star’ from Little Me by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, and ‘At the Crossroads’ from Doctor Dolittle by Leslie Bricusse. All are given the full Dallas treatment and are a total delight.
Another point about cabaret and how to do it successfully is that you should always take your audience by surprise and give them material they may never have heard before.
Dallas keeps it fresh with such eclectic numbers as those just mentioned and the likes of ‘Empty’, from Minnie’s Boys, a song by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackaday that was cut before the show opened.
Gene de Paul and Sammy Cahn’s ‘Teach Me Tonight’ is an excellent song I have only ever heard sung by Sylvia Syms, the jazz singer and allegedly Sinatra’s favourite female vocalist. It is followed in Dallas’ set by ‘Lazy Afternoon’ from The Golden Apple and ‘Under the Tree’ from Celebration by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones – both delightfully sung.
Although some may think that Dallas’ first London show was Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s Show Boat, in fact the actress was to have been in The Ambassador with Howard Keel, on which she did a lot of pre-rehearsal work but never appeared in because she had another stage in her career to fulfill.
She did, however, do a production of Kismet in London while at the same time appearing in late-night cabaret at the Savoy hotel. If that were not enough, she was also booked to do a TV show in Germany, and all three at the same time.
In Stages she repeats what it was like – doing a straight version of ‘Stranger in Paradise’, then jazzing it up for the Savoy and also performing it auf Deutsch. She makes it out be highly comical but at the time it must have been more hair-raising than hilarious.
A medley of ‘(Somewhere) Over the Rainbow’ and ‘Was’ combines two versions of The Wizard of Oz story by L. Frank Baum. There was the Judy Garland film and then Barry Kleinbort and Joseph Thalken for Was took the character of Dorothy to see how she turned out as an old woman with dementia. It’s an interesting thought and Dallas hopes that one day the show might be staged – perhaps even in London.
Talking of which, London was the home she made with her late husband, Garry Brown, so she gives us the song ‘London, Dear Old London’ from The Cabaret Girl by Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse, another delightful surprise for the audience. Incidentally, in marrying her husband Garry, Dallas had to turn down Yul Brynner and the chance to play Mrs Anna in The King and I. Of course she made the wisest and best of choices.
After ‘My Dearest Dear’, a song by her favourite composer, Ivor Novello, Dallas ends on a high note (literally) with ‘Hello, Young Lovers’ from The King and I and ‘If All the World’s a Stage’ by Anthony Newley and Herbert Kretzmer, bringing to an end one of the best cabaret evenings I can remember. She hopes to be back in London at her favourite room, Crazy Coqs, the latest ‘stage’ in this magnificent singer’s career.
Michael Darvell
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